


An Invitation

by bluesuedeshoes



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Smut, angsty smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-16
Updated: 2014-10-16
Packaged: 2018-02-21 10:39:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2465246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluesuedeshoes/pseuds/bluesuedeshoes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oliver has been looking after Felicity, and she hasn't taken kindly to it, shutting the curtains every time she senses him watching.  But then there's the one night she unlocks the window latch instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Invitation

**Author's Note:**

> [Context: I started writing this prior to S3E2 "Sara," so it does not necessarily mesh with that episode.]
> 
> I am normally not sorry at all but this time I really am. Here: die at the hands of my emotions with me.

“No,” she said suddenly, pausing.  “Whatever you’re thinking, no.  Go home, Oliver,” she said firmly to an empty room, shaking her head.

But he couldn’t hear her.  She wasn’t even positive he was out there, but the hairs on the back of her neck were sticking up and she couldn’t help the twisting in her gut that told her he was.  She looked out her window and tried to spot him, somewhere in the dark.  She scanned for a silhouette in the shadows, a flicker beneath a street lamp, but saw nothing.  She might be paranoid, but she was still convinced that she was right and he was somewhere outside her windows, looking in.  Refusing to be with her, but somehow unable to leave her in peace.  She couldn’t prove it, but she felt sure he was watching over her out there, a twisted guardian angel she hadn’t asked for.

With her lips pressed into a thin line, she walked determinedly across her bedroom and pulled the curtains closed, something she’d never really bothered to do before, but would continue to do every night for two weeks, until finally, the day she took the job with Ray, she just didn’t feel like it.

She got home and poured a glass of wine and tried not to think about the life choices that had led her to this moment.  She tried not to hate herself for agreeing to work with a man who had stolen her friend’s company.  She was trying very hard not to think about her recent visit to Central City and her realization that Barry, bless him, was in love with Iris West.  And after everything she had been through with Oliver…she just wasn’t interested in getting in the middle of that, certainly not so soon after…everything.

She was feeling miserable and tired and beaten down as she leaned against her bed, glass of wine in hand and far too weary to even change out of her clothes just at that moment.  She was very seriously considering curling up to have a good cry when that familiar sensation of the hairs on the back of her neck standing straight up hit her again.  She closed her eyes for a moment, wanting to hate him.  Oh, how she wanted to rail against him, to yell and fight and gnash her teeth at him.  If only he would give her the chance to loathe him.

She sipped her wine, looking at the window.  Tiredly, she pushed away from the bed and crossed the floor, like she’d done every night, intending to shut the curtains, a warning to him—assuming he was really out there and she wasn’t crazy—to stay away.  But then she didn’t.  The fabric was in her fingers, waiting to be drawn, and she couldn’t do it.  The next thing she knew she was pressing the latch open with the heel of her palm, unlocking the window.

An hour later she had almost forgotten she’d done it.  She had dragged her aching bones to the bathroom and washed away the makeup on her face, brushed out her hair, and slipped out of her clothes in favor of an oversized pajama shirt with ivory and pale pink pinstripes.

The breath went right out of her when she saw him.  Leaning against the wall in the corner of her bedroom, right beside the open window, was Oliver Queen.

…or should she say The Arrow?  After all, wasn’t that all that was left of him, green leather or not?  The thought hit her bitterly, like unsweetened lemonade.

She was frozen, not sure what to say, not sure what he thought he was doing there.  She wanted to tell him to get out, but she couldn’t.  Her heart was pounding from the very sight of him, her skin crackling with electricity from his mere presence.

“What—”

“You left the window open.  I thought it would be okay.”

She swallowed.  Was it okay?  What had she been thinking, really, when she unlatched it?  Did she _want_ him here?  She supposed part of her had still been convinced she’d been paranoid, and that he wasn’t really out there.  “You’ve been watching me.”

“I check on you.”

“You’ve been watching me,” she repeated, more firmly.  She wasn’t giving him any sliding room on this.

“I haven’t seen anything you wouldn’t be comfortable with.  You always close the curtain anyway.  Except tonight,” he added, and the unspoken question hung in the air, echoing off of her still walls.  Why?  Why tonight?  What changed?

“I took the job with Ray Palmer.”

She thought she could actually hear a crack split through his already damaged heart, and she had to draw herself up, steeling herself.  She had every right.

“I couldn’t say no anymore.  I can’t keep working at Tech Village, Oliver, I don’t belong there.  I am wasted on that place, and I might look great in blue, but polo shirts are really not my thing and he made it really hard to say no.  So I decided to say yes.  To the job.  Not to him.  I still hate him.”  She didn’t know why it was important to specify that she’d agreed to the job, not to Ray Palmer, but it was.  She had an inkling that the differentiation had something to do with finding it increasingly _difficult_ to hate Ray Palmer, but she really wasn’t about to tell Oliver that.  So she bit the inside of her cheek instead, crossing her arms over her chest and looking away.

“I get it.  You should be somewhere that you’re appreciated.  Used to your full ability.”

“Yeah.  I should.”

There was a drawn-out, breathless silence in which she couldn’t bear to look at him but he seemed more than comfortable drinking his fill.  Finally, she forced a breath and asked, “What are you doing?”

“I told you.  Checking on you.”

“You never used to.”

“I never worried about whether you’d actually call me if you were in trouble.  I do now.”

That had her eyes snapping to him.  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

He lifted one shoulder in a non-committal shrug, and she took the opportunity to look him over, her eyes traveling cautiously down his body.  In spite of having hung up the bow and hood for the night, he’d been jumping around on rooftops, but doing it in his tan leather jacket and jeans.  His hair was faintly damp from the light misting rain that had been threatening a storm all evening and most of the night.  He looked tired, grim, and he hadn’t shaved.  His eyes looked almost hollow.  She wanted to cross the room and slap him, to tell him of course he was miserable and empty: he’d cut everything good out of his life and completely denied himself anything that resembled happiness.  It was his own damned fault.

She crossed the room all right, but she didn’t slap him.  For years to come, she would wonder what had come over her.  Instead of reaming into him, she grabbed his leather jacket and leaned up on her toes and kissed him.  Hard.

Oliver wasted no time, gave her no chance to think about what she was doing.  As soon as her lips touched his, he had her face cupped in his hands—just like in the hospital, as if he was picking up exactly where they’d been before she’d pulled away.  His lips parted against hers hungrily, and she gasped against his mouth, a shuddering, needy breath.

It was unspoken, but understood: he wasn’t going to let her walk away this time.

Their lips molded together, begging life from one another, and her body surged against his, pressing closer in the desperate hope that maybe he wouldn’t give her a reason to walk away.  But then the sudden realization hit her, and she lowered down to her heels again, gasping for air, his hands still cradling her head.  “This isn’t you,” she murmured, trying to make her words make sense and failing miserably.  Because it wasn’t him.  It wasn’t Oliver.  He might be dressed like the man, but he was still the Arrow.

The Arrow was all that was left.

And somehow, disturbingly, he knew what she meant.  “It’s what I can give you.  Tonight.”

And that was it.  No promises, no maybes.  Just the Arrow.  The hero that had consumed Oliver Queen, making the man she loved yet another casualty of the crusade.  She didn’t, couldn’t answer him, just stood there, trying to catch her breath, trying to understand what that meant.  So he tilted her head up again, nudged her nose with his, brushed their lips together in a feather-light touch, asking permission.  She still couldn’t answer, just stood still, captured by him, scared to move for fear he would vanish in a puff of smoke.  His lips stole across hers again, that ghost of a touch that was almost a kiss but almost didn’t count, and she caught her breath, her knuckles turning white as they stayed fastened to the lapels of his jacket.  What were they doing?  Hovering in the limbo of an almost-kiss, their lips just barely touching as if afraid to go any further but desperate not to get any further apart…it was torment, the kind she could die from.

Oliver was trying furtively to regain control, but it was like trying to catch water in his hands and watching it seep through the cracks between his fingers.  The agony was radiating from him: desperate, frantic, precarious.  And finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the last of his control slipped away, and he pressed his lips more firmly to hers, his lips moving seductively over them, plying them apart, inviting the warmth of her breath.

His slid his tongue into her mouth to caress hers and her knees buckled, her groan reverberating in the marrow of his bones as he dropped his right hand to wrap around her waist, catching her and steadying her.  His left slid to the back of her head, sliding over her neck and fingers threading into her hair as he held her to him, refusing to let her break away for anything.

Felicity wanted to cry because her body fit perfectly against his.  She melded to him and let him seduce her with the languid, suggestive strokes of his tongue.  Her body was practically trembling with need for him, and she pressed her thighs together, desperate to stave off the need for friction between them, an intense ache growing there instead.

Forcing her fingers to uncurl from their grip, she slowly slid her hands up his chest and around his neck, clutching the back of his head to hers, mirroring him in need.  He groaned and suddenly both of his hands were on her hips and _God_ but his hands were huge.  They encompassed almost her entire waist as they gripped her tightly before closing around her ass and “Unh!” she moaned into his mouth when she abruptly found herself wrapping her legs around him just before he turned and pressed her into the wall to his left.

Her ankles crossed around his waist and her arms constricted around his back for support as her breath grew more ragged.  His mouth withdrew from hers, releasing her shallow pants into the otherwise quiet room, the sound ringing in both of their ears, coupled with his soft groan as he pressed into her core, his erection straining against his jeans for her.  His forehead met hers, his eyes closed as he struggled internally, nuzzling the side of her face and then ear and then neck, the scruff of his beard raking across her soft, velvet-smooth skin.  Felicity dropped her head back against the wall and his lips closed over her pulse, sucking on it, laving it with his tongue.

“Oh God,” she groaned softly and he hummed quietly in response, hips rolling against her again.  “Oh God, Oliver, _please,”_ she murmured breathily.  “Please.”

He couldn’t stand it.  He buried his face in her neck, breathing in her sweet scent, nudging aside the collar of her pajamas and tracing his mouth over her collar bone and shoulder.  His hands tightened painfully in her hips and she moaned gratefully.  More pressure, more friction, more _anything_.

Slowly his mouth drifted lower, pushing the collar further aside, one of his hands rising to fumble with the top few buttons of the shirt.  They fell open and he shoved it down her shoulder, exposing her left breast to the cool air.  His mouth latched onto it immediately and she groaned, her hand scraping against his scalp as she grasped at anything solid to anchor her.  His tongue rolled over her nipple and he sucked it, gently biting down, resulting in the hard arching of her back off the wall and a low moan of need.

He started to move to her other breast, but the pajamas got in the way.  In his urgent attempt to wrench the shirt further down her shoulders, one of the buttons popped loose.  Neither of them paused to care, and Felicity couldn’t spare energy to regret it as Oliver covered her other breast with the wet heat of his mouth.  Her hips bucked and she ground against the hard ridge of his cock, whimpering as she felt liquid pooling between her legs.

Felicity could hardly breathe when Oliver finally withdrew his mouth from her breast, instead dragging it down her sternum, raking over the folds of her pajama shirt while gently lowering her back to the floor, his mouth traveling intently south, grazing over her stomach through the shirt as he knelt down in front of her.  His hands gruffly pushed the hem up, and she gasped, shuddering, when his lips met the soft, sensitive skin of her inner thigh.  He closed his eyes and drew in a deep, staggered breath as her fingers threaded gently through his hair, caressing him adoringly, the touch sending waves of need crashing over him, a shiver trembling down his spine.  For a moment, he leaned his forehead against her stomach, his face buried in her, and he seemed to gather himself, to summon some inner fortitude.

“Oliver,” she whispered.

But before she could say anything else, the moment passed, and the next thing she knew, his thumbs were hooked in her panties, tugging them down and dropping them to the floor.  His hand ghosted over her thigh before finding the crook of her knee, and she caught her breath when he lifted her leg, hooking it over his shoulder before closing his mouth over her clit.  When she said his name this time, it was a heightened cry, and her hands dropped from his hair to the wall, palms flattening against it as she sought purchase.  His tongue flicked intently over the small bud again and she quivered.  He dropped his mouth lower, dipping his tongue inside of her before sucking at her outer labia, stretching and rolling the flesh in his mouth and savoring her responsive cries and her taste.  He lapped at her and his nose pushed against her clit, and Felicity’s fingers scraped at the wall.  Her hips bucked in response to the pleasure rocketing through her and she was grateful for the tightening of his hands on her thighs: the only thing currently keeping her upright.

He was relentless, tongue and lips and teeth exploring her for so long she forgot her name.  The intensity grew, shaking and tearing through her and she found it increasingly difficult to breathe, her chest heaving as her eyes shut tight, tears forming in the corners, emotion overwhelming her as an orgasm rocked through her.  His name ripped from her throat as he sucked on her clit while her body crumbled.  She was sobbing when she came down, every nerve in her body humming like a live-wire and tears rolling down her cheeks.

Oliver let her leg drop from his shoulder as he stood and was quick to band his arms tightly around her, pulling her into him.  “Don’t,” he whispered, kissing at the tears to try to stop them in their tracks.  “Please.  Don’t do that.”  He placed a soft kiss over her eyes, first one, then the other, and Felicity clung to him.  His hands ran soothing paths up and down her back, and she could feel how hard he was and damn her if she didn’t still want him.  “Felicity,” he breathed her name and she brushed her nose against his, and somehow their lips were like magnets, drawing one another in no matter how hard they resisted.  She could feel his breath on her, feel the feather-light touch of his parted lips brushing against her own, his head surging forward just slightly at the same moment hers faintly pulled back, and then chased back.

Neither one of them had managed to close the kiss when Felicity could finally form a coherent thought again: that Oliver was still wearing that blasted tan leather jacket.  Like he was ready to leave any second.  Her hands still shaking slightly, she started to push it off his shoulders, and he silently helped her, letting it drop to the floor.  She tugged at the hem of his shirt and he helped her lift it over his head.  And then there was skin.  She released a breath she’d been holding as her hands travelled up his arms and she brushed a kiss to his collar bone, breathing him in.  Oliver’s hands fell to her hips, his eyes closed and his head dropped forward for a moment as she softly kissed her way across his chest, hovering in places where she found the ripples and mottled color of his scars, lingering with kisses that felt like they were somehow intended to heal.

When he couldn’t stand it anymore, he bent down and lifted her into his arms, carrying her as he had done multiple times before—but this time to a bed.  He laid her down gently, like she might break, or vanish into thin air, and his eyes met hers while he crawled over her.  He leaned down and kissed her, slowly unfastening the last of her buttons before pulling the shirt away.  Her hands ghosted over his jaw before settling there, holding him in place, letting him deepen the kiss, his tongue diving into her mouth and stroking hers intently.  She arched toward him and her taut breasts raked against his bare chest and she moaned into his mouth.  With one arm braced beside her, he kicked off his shoes and removed his jeans.

It was something like a gasp and a whimper that escaped her throat next as his knee pushed her legs apart and he settled between them, the tip of his erection brushing against her entrance.  Her hips bucked and he made an almost feral sound as he attempted to control himself, his heart racing, his head dizzy with emotion and need.  He broke the kiss when he finally pushed into her dripping folds, just the tip, causing her head to drop back as she keened and his own mouth to drop open with a silent gasp.  He panted and tried to suck in air, body thrumming on overdrive as he forced himself to be still, waiting until he could finally get a grip on himself.  He pressed in a little further and her body tried to buck again, to urge him on, but he was going to remember every last goddamn second of this, so help him, and he dragged his hands down her sides before grasping her thighs and lifting them, spreading them, letting her plaster them to his waist as her needy moans filled his ears.  And then, slowly, a fraction at a time, he sank the rest of the way into her and everything stopped while she cried out loudly and his heart pounded violently in his chest.  With deliberate slowness he pulled back almost entirely before thrusting inside of her again.  Her hands dug into his shoulders and his name tumbled out of her mouth, and he leaned down and kissed her for it, a barely controlled, breathless kiss as he thrust again.

 _God, why do you have to be_ everything _?_ he thought desperately.  _Why do you have to be so fucking perfect?_

He was trembling, starting to lose it, and she could sense the shift, so she gently pushed at him, rolling him onto his back, keeping him sheathed inside of her, and she groaned as gravity helped her body sink into his.  She took control of the rhythm, setting a steady pace, her hips rising and falling while she leaned over him, letting him rise to meet her, letting his hand pull her neck forward so he could bite and suck at it, letting the other one tighten on her hip to keep her stable.  Her second orgasm started to build, slower than the first one, wrenching its way a fragment at a time through her body until she was screaming and Oliver had to roll her back over to continue pounding inside of her while she came, the agonizing pleasure carving through her body while he rode her through it.  She came down and he kept going, kept thrusting, kept filling her, until finally he spilled inside of her, growling her name in a jagged gasp as everything inside of him exploded.  He had just enough autonomy left not to collapse on top of her, instead rolling slightly to her side, hiking her leg over his hip to keep them connected, arms binding around her to hold her to him as he peppered kisses over her face and the top of her head.

It was a long time before either of them could breathe normally again, and neither of them could speak.  But both knew they had to.

Surprisingly, or perhaps not surprisingly at all, it was Felicity who finally found the courage to form words.  “You can’t stay.”

Any part of his heart that had survived the last few weeks shattered so completely that he was amazed he couldn’t hear it, like the sound of broken shards of slate crumbling and cracking.

“I mean,” Felicity was quick to continue, “I…I want you to stay.  I want you to stay so badly it hurts but—” she sucked in a hard breath, forcing herself to say what she had to, “we both know you’ll be gone when I wake up, and Oliver…” she hesitated, and when she finished, her voice was thick with emotion and he knew she was fighting back tears again, “…and that’s going to hurt _so much worse.”_

“Felicity…”

“Please.  I’m…I’m trying to get my life together.  I can’t do this.  I can’t go halfway with you.  It has to—” she cut off again, taking in a deep breath.  “It has to be all or nothing.”

He understood because he had known the same thing for two years now.  He had known it deep in his bones all along, and coming here, what they’d just done, it had been weakness on his part.  He felt ashamed, miserable for dragging her through it.

“But I needed this,” she said quietly and for the briefest moment he wondered if she could hear his thoughts.  She couldn’t, it was just that, right now, speaking, for her, was like opening a wound and letting it bleed.  Once it started, it was hard to stop.  “I needed this,” she repeated.  “I needed you…this…I…thank you,” she murmured, face burrowing deeper into his chest as she snuggled into him, her actions keeping him there even as her words pleaded with him to leave.

And he had to.  If continually watching her walk away from him had been difficult, though, he knew this would nearly kill him, and he selfishly buried his face in her hair and held on for a moment longer, skimming a hand along her leg and up her body tenderly before it reached the back of her head.  He tilted it up to kiss her, a goodbye kiss this time.  He pulled away and pulled out of her, both of them stifling moans at the separation.

Everything in his body screamed for him to stop, to go back to her, to kiss her and tell her they could be together, that that was all he wanted and he couldn’t give her up anymore.  His very bones shook with rage as he denied himself, instead picking up pieces of his clothing to get dressed.  Desperately he forced himself to look anywhere but at her, knowing the moment he saw her silent tears, the way her body curled into itself in search of comfort, he wouldn’t be able to do this.  He would hate himself every day for the rest of his life for this moment, but it had to be done.  The city still needed the Arrow, and now…after Sara’s death…he owed it to Sara to keep going until her murderer was found.  And stopped.

His jaw set as he remembered why he was doing this, an image of Felicity’s body covered in soot and blood, lying unconscious on a lab table flooded his mind, and his resolve hardened a little more.  This was how it had to be.

“That doesn’t take away from this,” he said quietly, pausing by her window, and he knew that she’d heard.  Purposefully, he strode back across the room, where she had pushed herself up from the bed and was slipping back on her pajamas.  Pulling her around to look at him, his eyes bored into hers.  “I don’t want you ever for one second think that this wasn’t everything to me.  And I know that you can’t wait for me, and—” he struggled, forcing a breath, forcing the words, needing to do this for her, “you shouldn’t.”  He paused, and he wondered how much pain she could see in his eyes, staring at him like that.  “You shouldn’t, but you should still know that not a second goes by that I’m not trying to think of a way to be with you.  But you shouldn’t wait for me,” he repeated one last time, so as not to leave any doubt in her mind.  "Maybe I'll get lucky, and one of these days I'll actually figure it out, and it won't be too late.  But I'll understand if it is."  He lifted his hand to tuck her hair behind her ear, pressed a tender kiss to her temple, and then fled.

It was five full minutes before Felicity sat back down on the bed and crossed her arms, hugging herself.  Of all the men in the world to fall in love with, she had to pick him.

In the coming months, every once in a while, she'd feel that familiar tingling creeping up the back of her neck.  She didn't shut the curtains anymore, but she never unlatched the window again, either, no matter how she was tempted.


End file.
